Over the past month, New Zealand’s main opposition Labour Party, the Greens, the Maori nationalist Mana Party and the right-wing NZ First Party, have intensified their xenophobic campaign to restrict immigration, particularly from China and other Asian countries. The parties are seeking to make this a central issue in the lead-up to the September election.

Labour, which lost the 2011 election by a landslide, is floundering in the polls and widely seen as no different to the conservative National Party government. Since National was first elected in 2008 it has implemented a series of brutal austerity measures to impose the global economic crisis on working people, leading to soaring living costs and increasing poverty and inequality. Labour essentially agrees with the government’s attacks—including thousands of public sector job cuts, health and education cuts, and an increase in the regressive Goods and Services Tax.

Now Labour and its allies are whipping up hostility to immigrants, blaming them for the deepening crisis, particularly the soaring cost of housing.

So the Socialists and the Greens are both attacking Labour for their attempt to blame house prices on immigrants.

They also attack Mana:

Depicting Chinese immigrants as a new colonising force, intent on dominating NZ’s economy, provides the rationale to support the US build-up to war against China, or else take a neutral position. At the same time, the campaign reflects the material interests of layers of big business and the petty bourgeoisie, including the Maori elite represented by Mana, who see foreign investors as rivals.

Mana’s statements are further proof that there is nothing remotely progressive about the party, which uses national chauvinism and racial identity politics to divide the working class and block any challenge to the capitalist system.

I think Mana gave up being progressive when they took the $3 million from Mr Dotcom.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2014 at 2:00 pm and is filed under NZ Politics.
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22 Responses to “Even the Socialists are beating Labour up on immigration”

Since National was first elected in 2008 it has implemented a series of brutal austerity measures to impose the global economic crisis on working people, leading to soaring living costs and increasing poverty and inequality. Labour essentially agrees with the government’s attacks—including thousands of public sector job cuts, health and education cuts, and an increase in the regressive Goods and Services Tax.

😐 Brutal austerity measures??

So… apart from the bit about the GST, World Socialist is every bit as much of a fact-free zone as The Standard and the Labour War Room?

Silly socialists; control immigration yes but not for housing price control; we must protect our New Zealand culture, do you know how hard it is to find a reputable fish and chip shop now days. I’m always so suspicious about the fish they serve.

do you know how hard it is to find a reputable fish and chip shop now days

No problem in Dunedin, most are still run by descendants of Chinese immigrants. Shark’n’taty is much the same as I remember it from way back – but it hasn’t always been part of my culture, perhaps because I grew up as far from the sea as you can get in New Zealand. I was about seven when the first fish and chips became available.

Oh the irony. The gaggle of leftwingers that shuffled up to Krim Dotcom’s mansion don’t like foreigners.
We must stop immigration they say. Except for one mega rich oversized underpaying European, he’s alright bcause he finances us!

Disappointing. These people can usually do better comedy than this. They were really off their game here and had to throw in ‘petty bourgeoisie’ at the end just to distinguish it from yet another Green party press release.

“Even” the socialists? No doubt this will come as a great shock to the readers of Kiwiblog, but Labour isn’t a socialist party and actual socialists are its staunch opponents, so this World Socialist article is par for the course.

“Even” the socialists? No doubt this will come as a great shock to the readers of Kiwiblog, but Labour isn’t a socialist party and actual socialists are its staunch opponents, so this World Socialist article is par for the course.

Everyone who claims to be vehemently opposed to socialism but support loose immigration controls needs to read it, and then explain how they’re not advancing socialism’s cause by espousing these sorts of policies. And that goes for DPF, too.

To quote but one passage:

Leftist values are not automatically anti-national. In the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, Western elites often combined affection for their peoples with liberalism, including support for expanded civil rights. The Christian drive to end slavery in the late eighteenth century was not associated with unpatriotic sentiment… However, as Eric Kaufmann has documented, the internationalist strand in socialist thought rose to prominence during the course of the twentieth century….

The same political elite that was surprised when the Soviet Union broke up into its constituent nations—because they did not regard it as an empire consisting of captive nations praying for release—is also managing the progressive swamping of Western nations by mass immigration.

The irony is, I’m more left-leaning on many subjects (justice, prisons, welfare) than many, if not most, other commenters here. Internationalism is, however, a particularly insidious and damaging strand of socialism yet opposition to it has been silenced on the left by shrieking “racist!” and “xenophobe!” and on the right by shrieking “free trade!” and manipulating the statistics to mount an economic argument when, as hj pointed out with many informative comments on the same thread, the Reserve Bank and Treasury have warned of its impacts.

When avowed rightists are lined up alongside Jan Logie and the rest of the Greens, and now the World Socialists, and still can’t see that their assumptions are flawed and their policies wrong, then much Kool Aid has been drunk.

Even the Socialists are beating Labour up on immigration
….
62.4% think there should be more restrictions on immigration.

Here’s some background as to why socialist support open borders.

I find Marxism boring.; I just don’t get it (as in see it). They don’t except that a reaction to the arrival in what is percieved as our territory by people from other parts and other ethnicities is seen as a threat which has an evolutionary basis.. To them race doesn’t exist it is just an ideology and the bad thoughts have been put there (probably form the powerful greedy ones up above). Because there is no such thing as race and the nation is essentially racist (Professor Paul Spoonley) , there is no excuse for borders and controls of any sort on immigration. They are blind to any negative effects of immigration because the Marxist paradigm trumps everything.
rdln.wordpress.com/…/analysing-the-white-new-zealand-policy-developi…

Capitalism is the mechanism that generates wealth for the most part reward for effort and also is a provider for the truly disadvantaged, both a good thing.
Yes it is abused which is bad.
So too is the socialist that wants to destroy this mechanism in favour of a system guaranteed to bring everyone down to a low level of existence with no prospect.
How do they achieve this?
Through demagoguery and deceit.
Motivation being a mix of hatred and lust for power, clearly a conflict with their mantra of peace and love.
Many left leaning people are not the hard socialists with an agenda, just people who act on their social conscience with good intentions.
They accept and in some cases embrace the free market.